101 — Michael Biggs on Puberty Blockers: From Curiosity to Exposé
Gender: A Wider Lens
Sasha Ayad and Stella O'Malley
4.6 • 961 Ratings
🗓️ 10 February 2023
⏱️ 69 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Gender: A Wider Lens, Stella & Sasha sit down with Dr. Michael Biggs, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St Cross College. Dr. Biggs has been key in uncovering vital information that led to the independent Cass Review on GIDS at Tavistock. Biggs has since turned his laser-like focus on the Dutch Protocol and in this episode, he discusses many of the issues with this flawed model. His distinguished body of work includes articles on social movements and collective protest published in all the leading disciplinary journals, including the American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, and Social Forces. In this conversation, Dr. Biggs tells the story of his experience as a professor in a graduate sociology program when he encountered pushback from students about discussing gender identity from a sociological perspective as part of a classroom exercise. Dr. Biggs has a longstanding history of advocating on behalf of LGBT issues and found himself puzzled when students questioned his intentions. He decided to dig into the literature to try to understand where and how the topic of gender generated such surprising responses from a few of his students. After diving deep into pediatric gender medicine, he continued pursuing investigations into the unreported outcomes for patients at the largest pediatric gender clinic in the world, the Tavistock’s Gender Identity Development Services (GIDS). After a lack of response when he requested information from the GIDS directly, Dr. Biggs filed a Freedom of Information request to access data about research and treatment protocols being conducted at the clinic. Ultimately, the buried outcomes of using puberty blockers in children and adolescents were far less than positive. Biggs began to wonder: how was the puberty blocker pathway worthy of its reputation as the “gold standard” for pediatric transgender care? Where was the research to back up that claim? What motivated Michael to dedicate so much effort to learning and reporting on medical experimentation in gender-affirming care? Dr. Biggs describes feeling compelled to a sense of duty and responsibility to use his privilege to fight for academic truth. His pursuit of the truth, along with that of several other key “whistleblowers” from within Tavistock itself, ultimately yielded momentum for the systematic “Cass Review.” The review process took over two years, but the interim findings reported in late 2022 ultimately resulted in the closure of the GIDS clinic.
Links:
Puberty Blockers and Suicidality in Adolescents Suffering from Gender Dysphoria
The Dutch Protocol for Juvenile Transsexuals: Origins and Evidence
Gender Trender — 4th wave now
https://4thwavenow.com/2018/11/17/wordpress-dumps-gendertrender-gallus-mag-responds/
The Wrong Body (video series - viewing requests available from the British Film Institute)
Part 1 - https://www2.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b80c5d9ba
Part 2 - https://www2.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b7f121f1b
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Today is our conversation with Michael Biggs and Stella I'm really excited to introduce this conversation to our listeners. |
| 0:07.0 | Yeah, Michael Biggs is a linchpin if anybody wants to do to kind of delve into the story of the medicalization of children's gender identity. |
| 0:16.6 | His work has been really, really pivotal in our finding out how, what is the impact of puberty blockers on children? |
| 0:25.9 | And you know he's an academic, he's, you know, he did his PhD, he's from New Zealand but did his PhD in Harvard, and he's now an associate professor of |
| 0:34.7 | sociology in Oxford. So like I said he's earlier he's no slouch. No he |
| 0:40.6 | definitely is very well respected in the academic world and where this really started for Dr. Biggs as he tells us in this interview is he was a sociology professor and of course they talk about many different topics in his courses and he noticed that when they were talking about things around gender and gender transition his students had very rigid kind of ideas of how you're allowed to talk about it. And he just thought this was interesting. |
| 1:08.0 | And yeah, he started kind of |
| 1:15.0 | kind of saying, you know, I don't know much about it. |
| 1:16.0 | He was in, of course, at Oxford at the time in the UK. |
| 1:18.0 | And so he started to look into the Tavistock. |
| 1:21.0 | And previous to that, he had been a very staunch ally, a very LGBTQ, you know, pro kind of very very |
| 1:29.5 | into it when he was when he was in Harvard years previously and he found it very strange when he |
| 1:36.3 | started looking into it in an academic way that information was being |
| 1:40.8 | buried and it's like he turned into a detective and he sent all these freedom of information requests which had he not sent them |
| 1:48.5 | We wouldn't be talking about the Dutch because we wouldn't know what was wrong. It was only that he had the frankly |
| 1:57.0 | that the genius stroke of I'm going to send in freedom of information requests into the Tavistock, which is the largest gender clinic in the world. |
| 2:06.5 | And I'm going to find out different information around things like suicide and puberty blockers and the, you know, can you replicate a trial you know that's ongoing and what are the results of this and he kept ongoing and it was an extraordinarily helpful and valuable contribution to our knowledge about puberty |
| 2:27.3 | blockers. |
| 2:28.3 | Right. |
| 2:29.3 | And you know, even though there's some kind of clinical language in here. We just thought this was so important because if anybody is |
| 2:36.3 | starting to kind of get interested in this concept of gender and particularly like children who are now |
| 2:41.7 | transitioning on a pretty large scale. |
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